


You sound red

by TyalanganD



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Classical Music, Fluff, M/M, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:08:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27982809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TyalanganD/pseuds/TyalanganD
Summary: Merlin is a composer. Arthur HATES classical music. Does he really, though?
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 85





	You sound red

There will be a French horn and vocals.

The French horn will play a perfect fifth, and the vocals – boy sopranos – will sing a piece which Merlin wrote the day before, one that is his own composition, but which was heavily influenced by Gregorian chant. Merlin loves borrowing inspiration from early eras in the history of music; it gives his pieces a distinct, almost otherworldly quality. A breath of an era long gone, almost like a window to another time.

Merlin closes his eyes and hums the melody to himself.

It sounds red.

It reminds him of Arthur.

There is absolutely no reason why Merlin should be composing a piece which sounds heroic and innocent at the same time. Heroes and saints don’t go well together, and mingling them always poses a risk of overdoing things. It makes music sound almost too perfect. But this is just a beginning, thinks Merlin, smiling to himself. Arthur also looked almost too good to be true when Merlin first met him.   
He looked perfect, and then, he spoke, and it all shattered.

That’s why Merlin introduces one, single bell of doom into his music. That’s why, when the strings enter, they play in a discord with the angelic voices, sliding on their parts with eerie sleaziness of the glissando.

Merlin met Arthur through his sister, Morgana. She was a fellow graduate, though she didn’t study composition. A cello player, she was one of the most passionate musicians Merlin knew. He used to hear her joke about defending her love for the cello from her brute of a brother on more than one occasion, but he assumed she was exaggerating. Her cutting sense of humor sometimes eluded Merlin, and he had often taken her sarcasm for seriousness; so this time, he told himself that this Arthur bloke probably wasn’t as bad as he sounded.

Well, it turned out that this time, Morgana’s sarcasm was well-founded.

When Merlin met Arthur at Morgana’s party, he was dumbstruck at the man’s handsomeness. Morgana was perfectly beautiful, and Merlin had expected Arthur to be her male dashing copy. What he was given instead was a man totally different in appearance, and yet, a shining star of its own.

And then, the man spoke. 

He was every bit the dreaded stereotype of a music dilettante, a kind of a guy whose first words were to make a joke at the classical musicians’ expense, saying things about nerds who can’t get laid, so they overcompensate in the size of their instruments. Merlin winced at that, but as if it wasn’t enough, Arthur started talking about Morgana – to her friends, in front of her, but without engaging her in the conversation. She was absolutely crazy about the cello, he said, she’d been playing it all the time, the racket was impossible, and why couldn’t she listen to some normal music instead?

Merlin was furious. He hated people who made music sound like some kind of a competition, antagonizing the popular and the niche, nagging to fight and never to reconcile. It didn’t matter for Merlin if those people were his snobbish friends who would sneer at the ignorant idiots failing to understand the classical music, or the pop fans sneering at classical musicians for being boring nerds. Merlin hated conflicts. His life was supposed to be about harmony. When he heard music, he saw colors intermingling with each other; when cacophony ensued, the colors screamed at him, overwhelming and aggressive. 

He just couldn’t let Arthur get away with this bullshit.

He smiles as he thinks of it now.

Merlin replays the half-formed music in his head. Yes, the boys’ choir is perfect. Their imagined voices overcome the eerie violins, treading courageously through the melody, starting from lower tones and suddenly jumping to higher ones – a perfect fifth again, an interval for a call to battle, a symbol of musical perfection. The tune they create is neither happy nor sad. Merlin is rejecting the major-minor scales, going for the medieval modal scales instead, and this is just perfect for what he wants to say. His music has no words, not even in the vocal parts, and yet, it speaks. 

As the voices in Merlin’s head reach the highest tone, he sees a flash of white light. He opens his eyes. The light is still there.

He wonders what Arthur will say when he hears the choir.

It didn’t take long for Merlin to realize what stood behind Arthur’s aversion to Morgana’s playing and everything associated with it. It was only after the party, once Merlin had already thrown a gigantic tantrum over Arthur’s prat-ness, that Morgana told him about their father.

How Arthur had been forced to play the piano, how he hated it because it took so much of his time, how Uther had insisted Arthur practiced several hours a day because he wanted to make Arthur a child prodigy. How, weirdly, the pressure he had put on Morgana was considerably smaller, and yet, it was Morgana who turned out to have much more talent for playing than Arthur.

“Uther didn’t manage to make me hate the cello,” Morgana said with a smirk. “But Arthur was supposed to be a virtuoso. Dad used to say he would have been one, too, if only he had been given the opportunity that he gave Arthur. I guess he thought Arthur was an ungrateful brat.”

Merlin wasn’t surprised by the story. After all, he was a composition graduate, he had attended musical schools since the age of six. He had heard really nasty stories about parents forcing their children to play, children who had no inclination to do so – and instead of making geniuses out of them, the parents broke their self-esteem and made them hate music in the process.

Merlin truly detested those stories. He had always been grateful to his mum for being different. She had encouraged him, but never forced him. She had talked a lot about Merlin’s dad. A pianist, he had died when Merlin was barely born. You have his talent, Hunith used to say. Merlin had grown up with a piano that had always been his to play whenever he wanted; with a mum who’d sing folk songs with him when making dinner; with shelves full of books on music theory, books Hunith hadn’t forced him to read, but he had always been welcomed to. History of music – a subject dreaded by most students at music schools – had been a matter of his bedtime stories. He used to dream of what would have happened if Handel and Bach had met; to wonder about Chopin’s folk inspirations; to throw popcorn at the screen when he had watched Amadeus with his mum and Will, shouting _leave Salieri alone_. And then, there had been the colors, of course. Synesthesia. There was just no way Merlin would grow to hate classical music, no matter how much hard work he had to put into studying it.

So, he felt somewhat sympathetic for Arthur. And angry at Uther for making beauty a torture.

He doesn’t even know how it started. He met Morgana’s brother on some other occasion, and, though the man was clearly put off by the idiot who called me a prat, they started talking nonetheless. Merlin asked Arthur about his aversion to classical music (Morgana told me, he said when Arthur winced at him), and promptly learned that Arthur had thrown a massive tantrum when he was ten, refusing to practice the piano anymore; that his father hadn’t spoken a word to him for a month afterwards; that after this month, he silently transferred Arthur to one of the best public schools, and focused on Morgana’s development instead. You don’t want to play? Then don’t. But don’t you dare show up with anything less than the best grades, Uther had supposedly said.

“And that’s how I became an economist,” Arthur finished, grinning.

“Do you like it?” asked Merlin.

Arthur shrugged. “Not tremendously. I don’t hate it, and that’s definitely an improvement.”

“Well, what about you come to my concert next month, and you’ll tell me if you hate it,” Merlin found himself saying.

Arthur laughed loudly, his head thrown back. Merlin jumped, startled by this sudden outburst of sound.

“I’m not sure you want me there,” said Arthur when he finally finished laughing. “Chances are, I’ll fall asleep.”

“Come and see then.”

And that’s how it started.

The door to Merlin’s room opens. The crack is minimal, but he hears it nonetheless. He turns to the door, only to see Arthur’s head popping in.

“Shit, sorry,” Arthur says. “I don’t want to disturb you. You hear every smallest noise, don’t you?”

“Come in,” Merlin says, smiling. “You’re not disturbing me. I’m almost done anyway.”

Arthur comes to him, standing behind the chair Merlin’s sitting on, putting his hands on Merlin’s arms, lowering his head to kiss his neck. A shiver goes down Merlin’s spine.

“Mmm, I love it when you do it,” Arthur murmurs. “Discovered some new depths of music while I was away?”

“Actually,” Merlin turns to him, standing up to kiss his nose, cheeks and jaw, “I’ve got a piece especially for you.”

“Oh? And how is it called? _Music for dummies_?”

Merlin giggles into his cheek.

“No, you _dollophead_ ,” he says. “It’s The Once and Future Melody. And it sounds red, just as you do when you talk.”

“Oh, and what do I say then? Maybe,” Arthur puts his mouth close to Merlin’s ear and whispers: “ _touch me, Merlin?_ ”

“Umm. Yes.” Merlin’s ears are very sensitive. To sound as well as to touch. Merlin feels Arthur’s hot breath and closes his eyes. He’s getting hard.

“I thought you want to hear the music before you make me lost my mind,” Merlin mutters.

“Well then,” Arthur takes his hand and pulls him gently in the direction of the piano. “You can play it to me. If you sit in my lap while doing it. Unless you prefer your magical composer software to do the work for you?”

“I prefer the piano.”

Arthur sits in front of the instrument, gesturing towards his knees. Merlin rolls his eyes and sits. He can just feel the side of Arthur’s cock rubbing against his leg. He swallows, looking into Arthur’s blue eyes. They are a bit misty.

“You’ll distract me.”

“Good. I like you distracted.”

Merlin feels his cheeks redden. Arthur likes him distracted, that’s true. But he also likes him excited. He likes when Merlin talks about music, disenchanting the thing which once used to be the nightmare of Arthur’s life, rekindling the passion which lay buried deep – the passion for listening instead of performing. Arthur would have never been a good musician, or a composer, but he has a natural, albeit hidden sensibility which makes him appreciate Merlin’s pieces on an emotional level. He doesn’t need musical education to find beauty in the harmony.

“I will have to add the flute,” says Merlin as he plays the main theme of the piece, Arthur listening with his head pressed to Merlin’s back. “The flute fits.” He wants to add _because the sound is purple, and it reminds me of what I felt when we had sex for the first time_. But he’s a bit shy to say it out loud. It sometimes sounds so cheesy, trying to explain the weird sensation.

“If you say so, I won’t argue. It’s pretty, the melody,” Arthur says.

“You think so?”

“Yes, Merlin, I don’t tend to lie to you, you know.”

“Good. I wouldn’t like to snog someone who lies.”

“Or, so we’re going to snog after all?”

“What did you think?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You’re such a daydreamer, with all this music of yours. Sometimes I feel like you’re almost ethereal. Disembodied.”

“Well, don’t worry about that. Music is very _sensual_. Believe me, I know.”

Arthur kisses him, deep, messy, long, their tongues entwined. His hand slowly lowers, stroking Merlin’s neck, back, cupping his arse, stroking his cock through the fabric of his jeans.

“Yes, I do,” he says, lifting Merlin, taking him to their bed. “That’s why I learned to love it.”


End file.
